Manic Pop

New week new dress? That's kinda what's been happening lately! I've just been having fun cutting out sewing patterns and making them up. I mean, why not?! The latest dress I finished was Burda's Fitted Sheath Dress #121 from June 2015. I have (no joke) had this dress design printed up and posted on my bulletin board for almost a year now and I finally made it!  I've been working far more with stretch knits lately and this was a perfect pattern to keep up on my skills with. It was simple, easy, and super-quick to sew up! What I love about this dress is that the fabric I chose was a horizontal print and with the way the pattern bends in shape to accommodate the rouching, the print essentially becomes vertical up at the bodice portion. So cool! The fabric is an ITY stretch knit from fabric.com . It was very easy to cut and work with! I will definitely look out for more ITY stretches in the future. I have a little over a yard of this left and I definitely...

If you have missed any of my posts, be reminded that I also occasionally post over on a West Michigan-based blog called The Art Shake ! A new post just went up today. This month, I will be showing you my process for using your hand-drawn creations, putting them into Photoshop and making a seamless repeat pattern! I will eventually be sending this print off to Spoonflower and making a top out of this print!

This dress was around 4 years in the making... I remember buying this pattern (I wrote "Sept. 2012" on the pattern packet). But at the time, I didn't use commercial patterns really at all because I went to fashion design school and thought that if I did that, then I really should be making my own designs up and not using someone else's patterns. I made my own sewing patterns for every single thing I made from around 2004-2014-ish! This is still something hard for me to accept: the fact that I have transitioned to using primarily commercial patterns versus using all of my pattern making skills that I worked so hard to gain. (I still have all my books, blocks, tools, etc.) I'll make something if the mood strikes but it's so easy and fun to customize with commercial patterns. That, and I am having wayyyy too much fun with all the stuff that's out there! This dress is Butterick's 1947 reproduction pattern called B5209. I see many, many people ha...